The Last Fool

As Jane Austen sets up Anne to return to her original goal--once foiled by her class-conscious father--winning the love of Captain Wentworth, she encounters the final sign posts in the desired direction:  the intense affection of her cousin, Mr. Elliot.

While sitting at a concert hosted by Lady Dalrymple, "Mr. Elliot's speech too distressed her" (ch 20) because he haugtily comes on to her as if she has always been the object of his desire.  This fellow who once hardly recognized her at Lyme, now claims "The name of Anne Elliot . . .has long had an interesting sound to me. Very long has it possessed a charm over my fancy; and, if I dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change."  In other modern American words, "You're mine!  You've always been mine!  The proof is we have the same name."  The fact that they're cousins should freak us out more today than at that time.  Entire royal families were made up of cousins until they realized that genetic abnormalities such as hemophilia resulted in such intermingling. 

Anne, genetics aside, does not like forwardness.  That love of the implied, the indirect, the subtle is what sets the sensible folk in Austen's works apart from the nonsensical, e.g. Sir Walter.  Austen points out that even Sir Walter is catching on to the fact that Captain Wentworth is the man to marry for his daughter as the author captures the simulatenous conversation of Sir Walter with Lady Dalyrmple: "a very well-looking man," he says of Captain Wentworth, thus giving his highly superficial stamp of approval to his middle daughter's desire.

Then, the final stage of the chapter, finds the official non-winner of the night, Mr. Elliot, busting up an attempt at conversation between the delightfully indirect Captain Wentworth and Anne.  Our heroine had just turned around the flagging spirits of the naval hero (way to go Anne, you cheer up all the downtrodden), when her goofy stuffed-shirt cousin comes up to ask her for an Italian translationof the  upcoming song.  Wentworth hurries off with a sorry line--"there is nothing wothy my staying for"--and Anne immediately realizes her ultimate dream in this act of jealousy.  "Jealousy of Mr. Elliot! . . .For a moment the gratification was exquisite." (ch 20)

Now the endgame of the novel is set.  Anne must solve this all-too-gratifying riddle of how to ditch her cousin and turn Wentworth's passionate envy into a life-time of love.  

The game is on!